1830.] and their Salaries. 15 



the higher orders abroad, gives all the requisite facilities for both ; and the 

 taste which this flower of diplomacy has learned abroad,, follows him across 

 the Channel. It would be only offensive to the delicacy of the English 

 mind, for us to enter into the results. But the perversion of manners 

 in the higher circles since the peace, is notorious ; and we know where 

 to look for the principal cause. 



Abroad, the habits and acquirements of this brood of diplomatists are 

 proverbially puppyish, idle, and offensive. If the traveller has any diffi- 

 culty to encounter, let him not go to one of the English attaches r-the 

 Royal Lumbertroop of ambassadorship. He will find the young official 

 either too busy with his friseur or his guitar, or pulling on his boots to 

 visit his favourite Countess of Bocca-grande ; or immersed in writing a 

 billet-doux to the more favourite Duquesa di Trema-mondo ; or be 

 received with a sneer, and, after lingering for his answer and his pass- 

 port a week, be consigned to a valet, who consigns him to the consul, or 

 his own banker the luckiest thing that can happen to him after all. 



The whole tribe of this coxcombry must be swept away like chaff. 

 The Lord Fredericks and Lord Alphonsos the whole elite of that incom- 

 parable caste of younger brotherhood, should be cashiered, or sent back 

 to school, and their place supplied with. the educated and manly young 

 men, who are so easily to be found in the middle classes of English life. 



Mr. Peel's palpable and mean neglect of the rising ability of our col- 

 leges ought to be exchanged for a zealous cultivation of the vigorous 

 minds that are there hourly rising into life, and from whom the true and 

 only efficient ministers and ambassadors are to be formed. The founda- 

 tion once laid in solid scholarship and manly English feeling, a few years' 

 residence abroad in the subordinate stations of diplomacy, would qualify 

 those young men for the most serious services to the State, whether at 

 home or abroad ; and the Lord Aramintas might be happily left at home 

 to carry the pocket-handkerchiefs of the Lady Amaranths, or hang their 

 legs out of the balcony of the Guards' club-room. 



But the system, let its change of men be what it may, should be 

 reformed in point of expense. Three-fourths of the diplomatic stations 

 are at courts, where they are no more necessary than if they were 

 planted in the belfry of St. PauFs. Of what conceivable importance 

 can be a British ambassador at such courts as Sardinia, Tuscany, Saxony, 

 Switzerland, Bavaria, Denmark, and Hamburgh ? What influence have 

 such courts on either English or continental affairs ? or what is there 

 among them that could not be transacted much more efficiently by a 

 Consul ? Yet the embassies to those utterly unimportant courts cost, 

 without considering the outfit, rent, or minor charges, in the simple sala- 

 ries of the ambassador and the secretary, not a shilling less than 35,000/. 

 a-year, or a sum little short of the interest of a million. 



What is the actual business of an ambassador at any of those minor 

 courts ? To deliver his credentials, and be asked to a ball at court ; to 

 give a ball in return, and thenceforward to receive the London news- 

 papers daily, a despatch from an under-clerk of the foreign office once a 

 month ; draw his salary once a quarter ; and act as master of the cere- 

 monies to the young English of rank, who look in upon him at his 

 hotel in the Jungferstrasse, or the Teufel's Platz, on the grand tour. 



The solemn occupations of such diplomacy may be judged from the 

 state of the Tuscan legation, where Lord Burghersh finds leisure to make 

 an opera every three months ; see it damned in his own palace, in spite 

 of Italian pliancy ; and have another ready before the laugh has expired. 

 An ambassador thus weightily employed, naturally selects an assistant 



